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michael29angelo
Participant
January 18, 2018
Question

Very Slow Rendering on Gaming PC

  • January 18, 2018
  • 3 replies
  • 6161 views

Rendering in Adobe After Effects CC 2017 on my gaming laptop is too slow! I have performed a test with two laptops and a desktop PC.

Let's name my gaming laptop as PC1. This computer is where the slow rendering happens. It took 4 hours to render my video. Here are the specifications of my laptop:

CPU: Intel Core i5-7300HQ

OS: Windows 10 Home (64-bit)

RAM: 4GB

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 (2GB GDDR5)

The next laptop will be named as PC2. This took only 40 minutes on rendering the same video. The specifications are:

CPU: Intel Core i7-5500U

OS: Windows 10 Pro (64-bit)

RAM: 8GB

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 820M (4GB)

The desktop PC will be named as PC3 and it took almost 50 minutes to render the same video. The specifications are:

CPU: Intel Core i3-3210

OS: Windows 10 Pro (64-bit)

RAM: 8GB

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GT 630 (4GB)

How can I achieve fast rendering on PC1? Two of the major reasons in buying this laptop are video and photo editing. Can AE use my GPU on rendering? Please help me how to adjust or upgrade something. Thanks!

3 replies

M
Majestic_dynamism0416
Participant
September 8, 2025

The main reason your PC1 is rendering so slowly is the very low 4GB RAM, which severely limits After Effects performance, while the CPU and GPU play a smaller role. Since AE relies heavily on RAM and disk speed, the best way to achieve faster rendering is to upgrade your RAM to at least 16GB (minimum 8GB) and use an SSD for faster cache and file access. Also, make sure to enable Mercury GPU Acceleration (CUDA) in After Effects preferences and close unnecessary background programs to free up resources. While AE doesn’t fully utilize the GPU for final rendering, these optimizations combined with more RAM and SSD storage will greatly improve performance on your laptop.

Snakedogman
Snakedogman
Inspiring
January 18, 2018

Not sure what "turning off GPU functions" will do for your rendering speeds. If anything you want the GPU to do as much as possible right? But After Effects only uses GPU for a few things so it shouldn't make a huge difference in rendering speed. The biggest factors in rendering speed are single core performance of your CPU and amount of RAM. 4GB is really very low although I would hesitate to point to it as causing a difference of 4 hours vs 40 minutes rendering time. It might though.
The Core i5 is actually faster than the i7 (since it's a newer generation) so it's not your CPU.
If there's an option to add more RAM to that laptop I would do that anyway. You can really almost never have enough RAM for After Effects, but it will also generally speed up your computer.
Of course some general tips would be to check if any other programs are running in the background, and all your drivers are up to date. Also check that your laptop isn't in any power saving mode, where it's throttling down the CPU. Set the power plan in Windows to "high performance" (I'm assuming you are not running on battery when rendering).

ToolfarmJP
Community Expert
ToolfarmJPCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 23, 2018

Hello,

You try a tool called RenderGarden. It is a paid tool. It is a 7-day free trial. It is worth using it.

RenderGarden | by Mekajiki

Review: RenderGarden accelerates After Effects renders - Toolfarm.com :: The Video Plug-ins People

    Snakedogman
    Snakedogman
    Inspiring
    January 25, 2018

    That's a nice plug for RenderGarden but it's really not a very helpful answer to the OP's question is it? He's asking why he has vastly different render speeds for different computers and how he can achieve better speed on a specific configuration and you give a link to a plugin for distributed network rendering.

    But ok let's from now on, for everyone who asks anything about AE rendering speed just link to RenderGarden and be done with it then.

    Mylenium
    Mylenium
    Legend
    January 18, 2018

    Start by turning of GPU functions in the relevant settings. everything else will have to be figured out by tweaking the graphics driver and its settings.

    Mylenium

    Shaykhnaveed
    Shaykhnaveed
    Participant
    March 12, 2026

    Yes! your right but it takes much time to find this kind workable situations but thanks for giving such a informational piece of content.

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